1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to checking and repairing a network configuration.
2. Description of the Related Art
A storage area network (SAN) may be described as a high-speed network or subnetwork that interconnects shared data storage devices with associated server computers that may be accessed by client computers. SANs are becoming a preferred storage architecture model for block storage systems in comparison to direct attached storage models for several reasons. For example, SANs allow multiple servers to directly share a block of storage devices and allow storage to be separately managed from the servers. Additionally, system administrators managing SANs do not need to purchase additional servers to increase storage capacity because additional data storage devices may be independently added.
In a complex network environment, such as a SAN, there are many sources of incompatibilities between components in the network. For example, a Host Bus Adapter (HBA) firmware level may conflict with the firmware in a switch to which the HBA is connected. An HBA may be described as an I/O adapter that resides between a host bus and a Fibre Channel loop and that manages the transfer of information between the host bus and the Fibre Channel loop. A switch may be described as residing between segments of a network, and the switch receives data packets, determines the destination of the data packets, and forwards the data packets on to their destinations. A Fibre Channel loop may be described as a serial data transfer architecture. In another example, a device driver may not be configured properly to fully utilize the capabilities of a storage device. A device driver may be described as a program that controls a device. Determining all of the possible problems in a SAN is a manual and often error-prone task. Furthermore, applying the correct change to alleviate a problem is also error prone and may result in a problem becoming worse.
Also, configuring a SAN is a time consuming and difficult task because of many interoperability constraints between devices from different vendors that a system administrator needs to be aware of. Typically, vendors create SAN devices so that the SAN devices interoperate with devices and services of strategic partners of the vendors, and this is done to gain competitive advantage over other vendors. Also, the interoperability constraints are constantly changing, and, therefore, it is difficult for a system administrator to keep abreast of the changes.
Therefore, in order to leverage the benefits of SANs, system administrators should be able to easily manage SANs. Thus, SAN management software is usually deployed along with every SAN installation. One feature of a SAN management software tool is its ability to help a system administrator configure a SAN. One such SAN management software tool is IBM® Tivoli® Storage Area Network Manager (from International Business Machines Corporation), which provides topology discovery and display of the components and disk resources across the SAN and provides monitoring and problem identification to assist in the maintainability of the SAN.
Thus, a system administrator needs help selecting new storage devices to be purchased for a SAN to ensure that the new storage devices are compatible with the existing devices in the SAN. Also, when new storage devices are being configured into the SAN, the system administrator needs help configuring the new storage devices so that SAN configuration constraints that are specific to the particular SAN installation are not violated. For example, a SAN installation may have some specific rules pertaining to which devices should be grouped together in order to satisfy performance, reliability, and/or security concerns.
Although existing network management tools are useful, there is a need in the art for improved checking and repairing of a network, such as a SAN network.